A UK maritime analyst has won international praise for a poem he entered for the prestigious Montreal International Poetry Prize. His composition celebrates the diversity of the oceans while warning of their vulnerability to man-made damage.
Salim Bhimji, an analyst who has worked in the shipping industry for more than 25 years, said that he was “reasonably astonished” to discover that he was nominated as a finalist for the Montreal prize, for which more than 4,500 people competed.
While great poets have through the ages revelled in maritime themes – including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Masefield’s Sea Fever – it is rare for authors to write verse channelling ecological concerns.
Salim Bhimji told All About Shipping: “I believe that poetry has the power to make people stop and think in a way that few examples of the written word can. My poem, Dereliction: And the ocean too weeps, begins by speaking about the virtues of the oceans and what they have, through the ages, represented. The poem moves on to speak of the damage being caused to our oceans as evidenced by several man-made factors including climate change, carbon emissions/pollution and oil spills etc.”
Mr Bhimji is part of a team that provides intelligence to shipowners, ship operators and brokers. That data spans all major commercial shipping sectors, including tanker, chemical tanker, bulk carrier, and the LNG/LPG segments. He is an executive director and managing partner of Ocean Press & Publishing Ltd. He began his creative writing education at The Poetry School in London and describes himself as “an incurable poet.”
His poem Dereliction has now been published in an anthology which will form part of the English Literature curriculum to be taught at several universities in North America and beyond. The anthology is published by Véhicule Press.
The Montreal International Poetry Prize is an initiative managed by the Faculty of English at McGill University in Montreal, a university comparable in status in Canada, to that of Oxford or Cambridge in the UK.
The Montreal event was founded in 2010 by the poet and critic Asa Boxer. It sponsors a global poetry competition, awarding one prize of C$20,000 to a poet for a single poem every two years. The competition is supported by an international jury of poets and participants from more than 100 countries, from which an eminent poet appointed by the Department of English at McGill University chooses one winner.
The competition invites online submissions of poems in English from anywhere in the world. In 2011 the competition was judged by former British Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion. Subsequent judges have included Don Paterson, Eavan Boland, Michael Harris, Yusef Komunyakaa and Lorna Goodison.
The C$20,000 prize is the world’s largest monetary prize for a single poem.
Dereliction: And the Ocean Too Weeps
by Salim Bhimji
Through restless centuries I have powered
Heroic onslaughts by commanders
Of the great empires.
Across the ages, man has longed to unravel
The mystique that shrouds me.
The scholars of science reach
For me to uncover secrets of the past.
Pioneering men seeking out new lands
Deemed me the crowning conquest.
Mighty industries flourish because of me
And dynasties shaped, by men
Who wove their steel through me.
For entrenched within, like incipient gems,
I meld the very elements with which kingdoms
Power prosperity. Yet no man can own me.
Agile and self-replenishing
I am a mirror of the heavens,
Nestling every rhythm, in cycles rippling.
To the unwitting I am formidable.
But the same seek solace in me;
In the soft, soothing songs
That dance through my being.
I am the cradle of life for billions.
Yet, for all my elegance, I am now bereft.
Wounded. The turning tides, so harsh,
Have left me ravaged; in anguish.
How I yearn to be cherished again. Grant me the dignity
I deserve. That dignity which was once unspoken,
Then, almost broken.
To survive, I must search reach clutch
At new ways to reinvent myself.
A mere ritual since times long past.
Except these are dark days
And I face ferocious thunders ahead.
Yes, I am wrenched by the unknown.
Though known by many names, I am unique.
That I might look invincible
Is simply part of the mystique.
Beyond the drifted ocean,
A heroine’s grief; spoken.
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Uploaded: 03 May 2023 01:55 BST
Updated: 09 June 2025 11:45 BST
